Idealistic Capitalists

Investing in startups and emerging companies is the process of identifying and backing the entrepreneurs and executives with the best ability to move efficiently and profitably from ideas to execution, and then from execution back to ideas and then back to re-focused execution. And finding those that do so on all aspects of their businesses -- marketing and sales, operations and finance.

The entrepreneurs to avoid are those overly focused only on ideas or only on execution. Those focused only on ideas often let the desire for the perfect negate the doable. They don’t quickly and rigorously subject their ideas to the rumble and tumble of the marketplace. Here we are referring to the great idea person that never gets around to actually executing upon an action plan.

On the other hand, those entrepreneurs focused on just execution, while at some levels far more effective than the ideas set, are often too slow to react to changing technological, marketplace or competitive conditions. They often define their value offerings so narrowly that they miss adjacent opportunities. Classic examples of this include IBM defining themselves as a computer hardware as opposed to a technology solutions company in the 1980s, thereby ceding the operating system software market opportunity to Microsoft. Or the traditional phone companies in the 1990’s not leveraging their huge patent portfolios to profit in the emerging mobile communications and Internet marketplaces.

Contrastingly, the best entrepreneurs and successful executives are constantly finding the balance between ideas and execution. They are masters at what we at Growthink like to call, “The Business of Ideas.” They are both creative and task-focused, but not too little or too much of either. They make plans and they work them, but they are not slaves to them. They understand that great businesses are inspired by ideas, but their success is counted in cash. They are, in essence, “idealistic capitalists,” believing that the best ideas, the best products, and the best services make the most money.

Entrepreneurs running businesses like these are few and far between for sure. But when it all comes together, legends are born and fortunes are made.

Most entrepreneurs fail to raise
venture capital because they
make a really BIG mistake when
approaching investors. And on
the other hand, the entrepreneurs
who get funding all have one thing
in common. What makes the difference?